Hungarian Turanism

Hungarian Turanism is a nationalist political ideology that originated in Hungary during the 1850s, encouraging the unity of the Magyars and the other Turkic peoples against the perils posed by Slavs and Pan-Slavism. Turanism received impetus after Austria-Hungary's defeat in World War I, after which Hungary was reduced to 32.7% of its historic size, lost 58.4% of its total population, and left 3,200,000 ethnic Hungarians in successor states under oppressive conditions. Hungarian Turanists hated the West, especially France and the United Kingdom, and supported anti-Semitism and pro-Eastern foreign policy, leading to the Turanist Hungarian government allying with Turkey, Estonia, Finland, Japan, and Bulgaria during the heyday of the ideology during the Interwar period.

Turanists supported Hungarian peasants' cultural uniqueness, such as their fishing hooks, animal husbandry, ritual folk songs, archaic dances, spicy dishes, and superstitions. They also insisted on ties of ancestry with Turkic peoples, Tibet, Japan, and even the Sumerians, and Turanist philosopher Ferenc Szalasi claimed that Jesus was a Hungarian man who was a noble of Parthia, and that there was a distinct Turanid race. The Turanist ideology was that of the HNSP and the Arrow Cross Party during World War II, and it was portrayed and vilified as an exclusively fascist ideology by the communist regime in the years following World War II. Since the fall of communism in 1989, there was a renewal of interest in Turanism, and the Turanist Jobbik party became very popular and strong.